Stuart Noland, a specialist financial professional and an alumnus of Oxford University are the Founder and CEO of Nolands Capital a full-service Deal Advisory, Transactional Services, and Advisory firm.
A Charted Accountant with over 10 years of experience, Stuart Noland has earned expertise in various areas of finance and business. Over the years, he has contributed to different fields of Business Management, Finance, Audit, and Consulting.
He has worked at KPMG, an audit & advisory firm, and Bain & Co, the management consulting company. Stuart became a Chartered Accountant CA(SA) in 2014; he completed a Finance Master’s Degree at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and did MBA at the University of Oxford the next year.
MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY & SERVICE PORTFOLIO
As a corporate finance house, Nolands Capital specialises in helping clients and their business achieve their goals across short, medium, and long-term horizons. There are 3 areas of specialisation:
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Transaction Services
- Management Consulting
On both buy and sell-side transactions, clients are fully supported, end-to-end. They provide auxiliary services such as business valuations, financial modelling/forecasting, and due diligence.
In addition, they also provide related consulting services around post-merger integration, business reorganisation/optimisation, and incentives development.
Because of its excellent services and expert team, Nolands Capital has been honoured with the Acquisition International Leading Corporate Finance & Management Consultant of the Year 2021.
THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE INITIATION
Stuart always wanted to work in an industry that was dynamic and ever-changing and that provided a good variety of projects and opportunities across a broad range of industries and geographies. An occupation that was exciting, challenging, and fast-paced.
The finance industry allows him to work closely with clients, learning more about their business, and thinking out the box to come up with innovative solutions to address challenges. Each day looks and feels slightly different from the previous one, regardless of how many years you have under your belt.
According to him, a finance career also equips you with the ability to transition into many different roles over time either operational/financial/ or strategic. It provides flexibility and helps you develop very transferable and monetizable skills. It also allows you to travel the world and work in many different locations.
CRAFTING LOYAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS
The clientele includes medium to large SMEs situated in and around sub-Saharan Africa, predominantly South Africa. The Nolands slogan has always been around Relationships and Solutions. They develop close relationships with clients and get to know them on a personal level in order to better understand their priorities, needs, and objectives. They also let the quality of our work speak for itself in developing innovative, and fit-for-purpose solutions that are designed with the future in mind.
“We offer holistic solutions to our clients, that not only accommodate our skill sets, but also the skills and expertise of the entire broader Nolands firm across all three key service pillars: Audit, Advisory, and Law. We don’t work FOR or AT our clients, but rather work closely WITH them in a mutual partnership to develop and execute solutions. Our existing clients consistently ask us: “where can you help us”, rather than “I need help with this” and that is a critical distinction” says Stuart.
GETTING OVER THE ENTREPRENEURIAL HUMPS
The business was started in March 2019, and it was hit by COVID and lockdowns barely a year after launch. This unprecedented disruption encouraged, or even demanded, a high degree of agility and responsiveness in the way it operates.
“We were determined that the challenges presented by the pandemic could not be seen in any way by the team as some sort of reigning in of our ambition. Instead, the systems we put in place have become an in-built strength that has improved efficiencies as well as the speed of decision making, response, and delivery. Ultimately, we are a business that was specifically designed to operate in a pandemic, rather than one that adjusted to it”, said Stuart while talking about the major challenges he has had to face.
“As a relatively young division offering a completely different skill set to the rest of the Nolands Firm, our primary challenge was threefold:
• Educate both the existing firm personnel and potential clients as to the types of services and value we can offer our clients
• Convince new clients to trust a relatively new outfit with a mandate of such a personal nature regarding the acquisition/disposal of their life’s work (their business).
• Lastly, we had to find the right mix of individuals with the same cultures, values, mindset, and ability to build a high performing and cohesive team in order to service the ever-increasing workload from clients”, he further added.
THE “SECRET SAUCE”
Stuart Noland got to where he is today by focusing on his goals, putting in the hard yards, and not taking any shortcuts along the way. He spent a long time (over 10 years) focusing on his tertiary studies and building a
solid foundation from which to build a career. He initially took jobs that would provide him with the best exposure and learning opportunities, rather than the best short-term remuneration. Stuart worked in a
number of cities around the world in order to gain exposure to different cultures and ways of working. Besides, he was fortunate enough to have a family that gave him great guidance in terms of thinking of how to structure and build a career from an early age.
NOLANDS CAPITAL, THEN AND NOW
The firm has consistently outperformed expectations during the first 3 years of operations thanks to the incredible effort from the team and support from the loyal clients.
“We are looking forward to continuing to identify and work with fantastic clients and form long-term relationships that facilitate mutual success and enable us to grow alongside the clients we currently serve. We are very excited to continue to grow the team, both nationally in SA and abroad, and continue to advance our capabilities in key areas that are of importance to our clients. We are planning to provide the infrastructure and auxiliary services to assist the overall Nolands firm to grow in other areas of business by delivering holistic solutions to our clients across all key service pillars: Audit, Advisory & Law”, says Stuart.
Words of Wisdom
There are no shortcuts to success. Start with the end in mind and be willing to put in the hard yards to build the right foundation for long-term future success.
